Audio 4:04
Aboriginal woman held in WA jail without conviction for nearly 2 years to be released

Lindy KerinUpdated
Thu 26 Jun 2014, 9:40 AM AEST

An Aboriginal woman, who's been held in a remote west Australian jail without conviction for the past 21 months, will soon be released. Twenty-four year old Rosie Anne Fulton suffers feotal alcohol syndrome and was found unfit to plead when she faced court over driving charges. Next week she will be moved from the Kalgoorlie Prison to supervised care in her home town of Alice Springs.

Transcript

CHRIS UHLMANN: A mentally impaired Aboriginal woman who's been held in a remote West Australian jail without conviction for the past 21 months will soon be released.

Twenty-four year old Rosie Anne Fulton suffers foetal alcohol syndrome (FASD) and was found unfit to plead when she faced court over driving charges.

Next week she'll be moved from the Kalgoorlie Prison to supervised care in her home town of Alice Springs.

The Indigenous Social Justice Commissioner has welcomed the move, but he's concerned there are more than 20 other people like Rosie Anne Fulton locked up indefinitely.

Lindy Kerin reports:

LINDY KERIN: After nearly 2 years in jail, Rosie Anne Fulton will be returning to Central Australia.

Her guardian Ian McKinlay says she's looking forward to going home.

IAN MCKINLAY: She knew that for the last two months that she'd be returning so she's just counting the days down on her calendar. So she's really pleased, a little bit apprehensive, but really looking forward to it.

LINDY KERIN: Rosie Anne Fulton was locked up 21 months ago. She was charged with stealing and crashing a car but with the mental age of a young child she was found unfit to stand trial and given an indefinite sentence.

Ian McKinlay says under normal circumstances, she would have been released long ago.

IAN MCKINLAY: If she had been fit to plead and a court was sympathetic to her disability, it could range from anything from a good behaviour bond right through to around six months in the Northern Territory if she'd been convicted with that sort of offence and she didn't have any huge number of priors. No, she would have been in prison in my view three, perhaps four times longer than she would been had she been fit to plead.

LINDY KERIN: From next week Rosie Anne Fulton will be under supervised care at a house managed by staff from the Northern Territory Health Department.

IAN MCKINLAY: The only shortcoming so far, which is still being negotiated, is that this placement is totally voluntary on her behalf and if she chooses to remove herself from the care on offer and returns back to her riverbed environment, she'll be back in serious jeopardy.

MICK GOODA: She's been in jail for nearly two years in Kalgoorlie for a fairly minor traffic offence I understand, being found unfit to plead but so been found guilty of nothing but spent nearly two years in jail.

LINDY KERIN: What's your understanding about how many other people are in a similar position to Rosie Anne Fulton?

MICK GOODA: Well, that's part of the problem, Lindy. We don't know yet how many people are in a similar position. What we get told there is possibly about eight in the Northern Territory and around about the same number in Western Australia in a similar position to Rosie, you know.

But one of the big problems is we don't know the exact figure. But I'd say one person sitting in jail without being convicted of anything is one too many.

LINDY KERIN: Mick Gooda has renewed calls for a national audit of the country's prisons to find out the exact numbers of people with mental impairments locked up indefinitely without convictions.

He says with an increasing number of foetal alcohol syndrome cases emerging, the numbers are likely to grow.

MICK GOODA: We know from the research the George Institute is doing up in Fitzroy Crossing, there's a massive number of kids coming through the system with FASD and if they all fall into a similar boat as Rosie has found herself, you know, we're just going to have an epidemic of these cases that we're seeing right now.

As a matter of fact, two of the cases we know in Alice Springs are these two men, they're nearly eight years behind bars without being found guilty of anything for a similar reason Rosie found herself there and that's FASD.